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Jeff Coe tips us to news that a group of Sega employees recently stumbled upon a storage room in the company's product development department that contains just about every piece of hardware and software Sega has ever released. They were also kind enough to snap some photos and share them.
"We asked around about how the room came together and couldn't get a straight answer. Some had said our old legal department had run the archive and given it up to someone else to manage. Others said that the legal archive still exists in another room in the office, and this was pulled together over time from producers and product managers. We don't know the exact how or why, but we love that it exists and immediately accessible."

The article said every piece of hardware. I see no Virtua Racing, no Sega Rally, no Top Skater, no arcade games to speak of. I also don't see any pinball machines.

Sega's shining stars were in the arcade (with the exception of the Naomi system which was just a Dreamcast on 'roids). I was genuinely excited that there might still be a mint collection of arcade jewels, but instead I'm treated to pictures of spindles of preproduction GD-ROMs.

Yeah, I know. I've written rants before on the asshattery of Stern pinball, and I may again at some point. It's a shame that Stern ended up with the rights to the Data East platform. And I guess I have a big imagination when it comes to envisioning rooms full of wonderfulness.:)

Yeah, I know. I've written rants before on the asshattery of Stern pinball, and I may again at some point. It's a shame that Stern ended up with the rights to the Data East platform. And I guess I have a big imagination when it comes to envisioning rooms full of wonderfulness.:)

Better than Gottlieb - they actually requested sites like the IPDB remove all the ROMs (that were once downloadable from Gottlieb's website). Said ROMs were also removed from the website. The reason? All the Gottlieb retailers compl

Agreed, Gottlieb pinballs are utter crap anyway. Any advances they made on their technical platform were completely nullified by terrible gameplay, awful visuals, and the same jerkoff doing the voices for EVERY FREAKING GAME. Waterworld? *shudder* Shaq Attaq? *vomit*

See that's why it doesn't make sense. Like there really was a room that everyone walked past for so long and nobody knew what was in there until one day someone finally opened it. That's ridiculous. I think the staff just kept it all locked in there so they can whip out the Sega G and play some Phantasy Star during break and someone finally found the room where they stashed it all lol.

Well, they've already violated the Shining and the Phantasy Star series. Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Strike (Desert, Jungle, Urban, etc) games have been run into the ground on the PS2. Microsoft already made a ridiculous new Shadowrun video game. I'm not even going to talk about any Sonic games after 3D Blast.

Sega was great with the 2D but in the 3d world...i don't know...it's like they don't have any good ideas any more.
They should make a new console and great games for that console(actually deep inside me i want sega to sell again 16bit games but that's an other story ).
Maybe a new development team. A new mascot.

(actually deep inside me i want sega to sell again 16bit games but that's an other story ).

The GBA was just a little more 32-bit than the Sega Genesis (ARM7TDMI on a 16-bit bus vs. MC68000 on a 16-bit bus), and it had Sonic Advance (decent) and Sonic Genesis (called a terrible port by many Sonic fans).

I can't read the article 'cause it's/.'d, but from what I can see on the Flickr mirror of the images, it's not only all the games, but stacks of spindles that, I assume, have development builds. So not only does the secret/foregotten door contain every game, but stacks of historical/never-seen-before stuff (read: pre-release builds) as well!

Something like that, as funny as it sounds, it's not really that hard to believe, there was probably some Secret Door Manager in charge of it who didn't think it really mattered, no one else suspected its existance since that guy has been in there and hadn't said anything.

Stuff shipped in and out randomly, coulda been paper towels or post-it notes... la te da... then some inspection is due (insurance, maybe some mods to the building)... bam, what the hell is all this?

I see stackes of games, cd's joysticks, develpoments consoles, drawers full of cables and and controllers...
seems like a great place to end up locked in for the night....but wait....
what's this not a single monitor or TV?
DOH!!!!

I run Hidden Palace [hidden-palace.org], a website devoted to preserving unfinished versions of games (prototypes) and unreleased games (for various reasons, mostly that the media isn't forever, it decays after 10-15 years)

I spend tens of thousands of dollars on this stuff, when companies like this just ignore it. Most companies throw stuff like this out (SEGA got rid of most of its stuff in ~2001, a lot of unreleased games got destroyed this way).

I would think that every company would have some sort of archive for their products, even ones that were finished to some point but never made it to market. Especially game companies that, for the most part, just store the CDs/carts.

Here's hoping that some of these gents take some spare time to fix up this room and make a proper archive.

Personally, I think a small "museum" type setup to show off consoles, accessories, etc. with the gaming library nearby would be a really cool thing. There was this Video G

Sega CDx it was too cool of a system to let go. There were even a few cartridge games (not all) where I could start a music CD in them then push the cart in and play the game to my fav CDs.... good times.